Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R) on Sunday questioned why scientists haven’t manipulated the weather to extinguish the wildfires over Southern California, insisting to her social media followers: “They know how to do it.”

The Georgia congresswoman, whose educational background is in business administration, specifically cited a process called cloud seeding, which can stimulate preexisting clouds into producing rain, though at a small scale. She’s previously suggested, without any supporting evidence, that powerful hurricanes are generated this way in the South to deliberately hurt Republican-majority areas.

One of the issues with cloud seeding as a solution in Southern California is that the region has been experiencing a severe drought for weeks, leaving the air with low humidity and a lack of precipitation-producing clouds. Under such conditions, there’s limited to no opportunity for such a method to work, as Heather Holmes explained in 2017 while an assistant professor in physics and atmospheric sciences at the University of Nevada, Reno.

“When cloud seeding is used to prompt precipitation, or rain, the technique relies on already existing water molecules in the atmosphere to condense onto the particles, or ‘seeds,’” she wrote for the university’s news outlet, Nevada Today. “Because moisture is the first ingredient for cloud seeding to produce rain, cloud seeding cannot be used as a solution to create rain during drought conditions.”

The North American Weather Modification Council similarly advocates against cloud seeding during drought, stating online that “cloud seeding opportunities during these periods would be very limited and the results likely marginal.”

In past instances where it was used to produce rain or snow ― in places like China, Pakistan, Idaho and Colorado ― scientists would monitor incoming clouds by satellite, analyze their content and, if the conditions were ideal, shoot or release silver iodide into the passing water vapor. This chemical causes water droplets in the clouds to freeze together and fall as rain.

The process isn’t simple or always successful, and results aren’t immediately substantial, as one meteorologist with the private company Weather Modification International told NBC News in 2022.

“It’s one of the things that makes it so hard to evaluate, is you don’t see a doubling or tripling of the precipitation,” Bruce Boe, the company’s vice president of meteorology, told the network while discussing the process’ use to create artificial snow.

“You see an incremental increase, but you add that up over the course of a winter and then it can be significant,” he said.

The National Center for Atmospheric Research, which has tested cloud seeding to generate snowfall for water management purposes, has also pointed to wind conditions needing to be just right (Los Angeles is currently experiencing 45-70 mph wind gusts that authorities blame for helping fan the flames). The research center has also questioned how cost-effective cloud seeding is.

“The seeding produces ice and that ice can form snow, but is it enough additional snow to make it cost effective?”National Center for Atmospheric Research scientist Sarah Tessendorf said in 2020 after the research institute’s testing in Idaho. “For water managers, the bottom line is the amount of snowpack that you’re building over the whole winter and how much runoff it will generate.”